Conroe Pricing Update. . .

This week has brought some cautiously good news to the Conroe pricing front.

First, the lower-end Conroes are showing up and prices, while still a bit higher than usual, aren’t too horrendously inflated. For instance, Zipzoomfly has the E6300 available and in stock for $208 and free shipping.

The upper-end Conroes are still usually showing inflated prices and no availability, but one big place is a notable exception, at least for the price. Buy.com doesn’t have any E6600s at the moment, but when they do, they’ll sell them for for $339. This seems to be an indicator that enough supplies will be coming in the next few weeks to moderate prices.

For those who’d like to give their business to the little guy, Tank Guys is offering competitive prices, and providing much more feedback on availability in its forum.

We suspect prices will generally moderate a bit towards the end of the month, early September, but you’ll probably save more money waiting until at least October.

We’ll also note that beginning in October, Microsoft will begin offering free Vista coupons to PC buyers. While that may not be available to DIYers, it might with a combo system, and probably would be if you buy an OEM computer for yourself or a Sixpack.

Add to that the likely availability of DX10 cards, and October would seem a good time to buy a Conroe system (and for those more patient/cheaper, we remind you of the big OC chip of 2007.

So again, we say, patience, and as an added footnote, don’t buy the rest of the system ahead of the Conroe. I’ve seen cases where people have done that, and now find themselves buying Celerons just to ensure that the other parts aren’t DOA.

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